Aussie Climate Scientist: Having a Baby is an “ethical entanglement”

For a climate activist, having babies is apparently a troubling ethical dilemma, a distressing personal contribution to the global anthropogenic carbon footprint. But somehow they keep popping them out.

I’m worried having a baby will make climate change worse

Sophie Lewis

Part of my motivation for becoming a climate scientist was my grave worries for our future and my desire to make a positive contribution. In today’s world, this isn’t straightforward.

Earlier this year, I wrote publicly of my qualms around desiring children. I have always loved children and always wanted children in my own life. At the same time, among my friends and colleagues, such ordinary desires are increasingly accompanied by long, complex conversations about the ethics of such aspirations.

Children born today face a dramatically different climate future than their parents did. A child born today is a child of a changing – and extreme – global climate. The decision to have a child is a decision to exacerbate such climate extremes.

…

Nonetheless, in recognising the sadness of our near neighbours, I also feel compelled to recognise the beauty and opportunity of my own life. Despite my uncomfortable internal conflicts, the impending arrival of a much-wanted baby is intensely joyful.

Dr Sophie Lewis is a climate scientist and research fellow at the Australian National University.

Sophie isn’t the first anti-population and climate crusader who somehow made an ethical allowance for their personal needs. Last August WUWT wrote about US climate philosopher Travis Rieder. Rieder travels the country trying to convince students not to have kids for the sake of the climate, and wants to tax your children, but somehow he ended up having a daughter of his own.

No doubt a similar process of personal angst and philosophical self flagellation concludes with the purchase of lots of airline tickets to fly to all those climate conferences.

That is what I was told when I made a comment about how I was less concerned when a person who could afford to support a child had a child, compared to when people who were too poor to support a child had a child. Apparently, one should only be concerned with the child’s environmental “impact”, not his wellbeing. I kind of wanted to smack the person upside the head.

Note: I am not saying “poor” people should not have children. Whole other discussion. I just thought it was telling that the people involved in the conversation were more concerned about the “burden” a child would place on the earth than they were about whether the kid would starve, have medical care, etc.

Definitely a plus for us, vis a vis the terrorist snowflakes. But for every child they (and we) don’t have, the terrorist from that from that other cult masquerading as a religion has 5 or more. And the snowflakes are aiding and abetting these quaint (seventh century) colonialist in every way they can. How suicidal can some people be?

Sophie need not worry. There are millions of untimely deaths each year from War, terrorism, a woman’s right to choose and the unintended consequences of ill-thought out ecoloon policies. She can fulfill her basic instincts without creating Thermageddon.

My suggestion to this woman is forget about tomorrow. Treasure every moment today with your child and don’t skimp on the nice things trying to be “Green”. And take lots and lots of photos. They grow up fast.

Agree totally. I picked up on this as well. She had made her mind up before entering into the science. Not an uncommon trait in climate science. It has been hijacked by environmentalists who see it as a tool to drive through their own beliefs.

Yes, that struck me immediately. Funnily enough I was only thinking about this yesterday.
The global warming scare got public attention in the mid 1980s. Anyone in the age group 0-30 at that time (like myself) is now 30-60, and has been subject to 30-odd years of scaremongering since that time.

At that time I believed it, and passionately so, as is the way of youth, and as so many others have done, then and since.
There was/is also the feeling that we should ‘do something about it’. For students, young scientists and schoolchildren this surely is/has been a major motivation to take up ‘climate science’ or related ‘ecological sciences’.

So for 30-odd years those sciences have been increasingly populated by people with this mindset and motivation. Any scientist under 60 has heard this story incessantly from an early and impressionable age.

So it should not be a surprise that there is a so-called ‘consensus’ of these scientists, or that there is an ongoing plethora of sympathetic papers published by them – that’s why they’re doing it in the first place!

Luckily I was never motivated to become a ‘climate scientist’ and played with computers and guitars instead.

And many thanks to WUWT and others for showing where I was wrong. I just wish that I (and others of my age group or younger) had had these excellent resources back in the 80s and 90s.

“consensus” is a religious argument. Religious thesis become “true” by consensus (no proof is possible because religion covers the Unknown), endless repetition and environmental threats. The consensus implies that heretics have to be silenced.

Selective enrollment of greenies and, following that, selective recruitment more of the same into climatology (and environmental reporting) constitute the major explanation for the consensus, not greed or leftism. Those are secondary.

This is the riposte that should be made to claims such as the ones routinely reads in WaPo about “the overwhelming consensus of the world’s climate scientists.” What it really is, is an overwhelming consensus of greenies.

(Evidence: I suspect 2/3 or more of them are members of some greenie activist organization. When they are next polled they should be asked if they are members of such organizations, and whether they were greenies before they chose their occupation.)

These people are living in an alternative universe that only exists in their heads. Seriously. I’m afraid to be driving on the road with leftists; half of them are suicidal depressives and the rest just plain barmy!

The concept of eugenics is not imaginary. Sophie Lewis’ attitude about having a family of her own is an inevitable result of eugenics. However, that philosophy is also self defeating – if enough believers cease having children soon there will be less than critical mass of those like thinking humans. When that happens the other guys win because life is ultimately a competition and the most effective at making use of the resources provided, survive.

This is reminiscent of journalism. After Woodward and Bernstein kids started to go to journalism school to be part of a “cause”; they would bring down the establishment (and the evil Republicans.)
The irony is that even though the “despicable” Republicans are still in their sights they are fighting tooth and nail to maintain the establishment (a.k.a. the Deep State).

Credit Woodward for spitting out the Kool-Aid, and wielding his poison pen somewhat fairly. Bernstein, OTOH, is a denizen of MSNBC, and Rachel Maddog’s sweaty lap poodle (Carl must buy Speed Stick by the case.)

In a manner government does interfere with whom has children or not. The US treasury doles out a large amount of money to families who cannot support themselves nor the progeny they generate. This effectively subsidizes and enables the creation of large families by those incapable of supporting them.

7.5 billion people and still we have cut the global poverty rate in half in 20 years. Sounds like the ultimate manifestation of Moore’s Law. Is that not the real goal of civilization…to increase the supply of happy, loving, well provided for people on earth? Did not Jesus, Meher Baba, and all the other of God’s prophets teach that love comes first? Imagine replacing angst about carbon with faith in people’s ability to solve the problems created by poverty; to improve literacy; to provide self-fullfilling jobs; to create children full of love. Is not that world so much better than a world full of hand-wringing carbon worshippers?

Europeans are also not replacing themselves. link It’s going to be a problem in America. link It’s even a problem in China. link

Western civilization has been a tremendous boon to the planet’s population. My favorite cartoon has two cavemen talking to each other.

Something’s just not right – our air is clean, our water is pure, we all get plenty of exercise, everything we eat is organic and free-range, and yet nobody lives past thirty. link

We may be living in paradise. link Too bad that we seem to have fallen into nihilism and have lost our will to breed and have lost our vision of what was great about our society. That may lead to disaster.

Me, I prefer to comment where she might actually read it. You can comment on the article linked above, here’s what I wrote:

So Dr. Sophie has made a choice that she admits was “entirely selfish”, and then wants us to consider her a noble person because she agonized over her entirely selfish decision?

Color me unimpressed. All that shows is that she actually does NOT believe what she claims to believe, or she wouldn’t have kids … but then she’s a climate scientist, so dissembling about her beliefs and her actions makes perfect sense.

w.

We’ll see if they have the blanquillos* to actually publish it.

w.

* “Blanquillos”, or “little white ones”, used to be Mexican slang for eggs, which one didn’t want to call “huevos” because that meant … well … what you think it meant.

Yes, we should all go to the article and make comments. In the meantime…

Her hypocrisy and selfishness is beyond comprehension. She is perfectly willing to condemn her children to death by non-birth because her own existence as a carbon-spewing planet destroyer justifies deliberately depriving her children of the life she herself enjoys. She should look in the mirror and question the value of her own carbon spewing existence. How does it go? A pound of carbon-savings in hand is worth two buns in the oven…

Back when I was a kid in the 60s, the young adults were fond of saying they didn’t want to have kids because they didn’t want to doom them to life in a world of nuclear war. With the pill and pre-AIDS, sex was very much in fashion, which they celebrated (frequently) while proclaiming – isn’t it great! Another child not condemned to the miserable world we are leaving them.

If someone casually loaned her a copy of Camille Paglia’s Free Women, Free men she might yet save her soul. Question authority. “If civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts.”

Hand-wringing and virtue signalling at its most obnoxious. Note that she did in fact have her baby. So what she is really saying, aside from the ridiculous posturing, is I am having my baby, and my genes are getting into the next generation, but you should reconsider having yours.

“A child born today is a child of a changing – and extreme – global climate.”

What is “extreme” about today’s climate? I find the climate where I live to be quite pleasant. I doubt this climate scientist could list any extreme attributes of the global climate that are unique to our day.

That is what I was thinking as well, Louis, when I read this.
There is nothing extreme about the climate now as opposed to any time in the recent past.
In fact, it seems we are in a very mild period.
If anyone should be aware of this, it ought to be someone who has studied and presumably researched such matters.
Her words betray a distinctly unscientific worldview…her mind is made up…was before she even entered the field.
It is going to be difficult if not impossible for a person who has no objectivity or skepticism to make any contribution to any field of science, either a positive or a negative one.
It sounds like her role will be as another blank-minded nodding head.
And just what is a “climate scientist”, anyway?

A climate Scientist is a person who studies the affects of a drought here, a flood there, a fire here or there.

They then study the global climate models and predict what will happen when droughts and floods and fires increase according to the deeply flawed climate models.

Thus the vast majority of Climate Scientists study attribution, and know diddly about causation or real world observations. They also are observed to often wring their hands and buckle their brows while whaling hysterically.

Other ” scientists” are paid to study their stress, which is known to be endemic and contaigious, likely also caused by your SUV.

She states – “We collectively recycle, switch off lights, install LEDs and chose green energy providers. But such measures are more than negated by a decision to have children; having a child in Australia is an ongoing commitment to a high carbon future.”)
presumably she wants to protect nature; Yet when nature wants to protect it’s self from over population –
(“I also experienced years of infertility, miscarriage followed miscarriage, my partner and I were consumed by tests, injections and surgeries,”) she demands technology built & run on fossil fuels.
She goes on to list the fossil fueled ‘must haves’ for a baby in the first world.

Simple answer Sophie…cut your ‘carbon footprint’, go & live in a 3rd world economy & hope your baby survives long enough to sustain you in your old age.

I can’t remember at exactly what age, or shall I say what year it was, that I first heard of this idea that Mankind’s emissions of CO2 were raising the overall level of CO2 in the atmosphere, which would cause essentially greater insulation of this old planet resulting in a higher overall temperature. My instant reaction was, it sounds far-fetched but it has apparently been researched and studied and all that and announced to the public, no less, so there was a good chance this was an accurate report. But, it had taken some hundred years or so to get ourselves in that position and I hadn’t noticed any catastrophes yet, and by a catastrophe I mean someone spontaneously combusting right before my very eyes, anything less than that was not a catastrophe, so obviously this was a slow-moving problem so there was no need to start running, and furthermore anything resulting from our past half-century to century of intensive fossil fuel use (the Industrial Revolution, in other words) wasn’t going to be altered instantaneously either, it would likely take as long to undo it as it took to do it, so the best we could do would be to just get used to it. (Now there’s a run-on sentence to be proud of!)

I maintained that view all the way through the release of “An Inconvenient Truth”, which caused me to first consider I should look into this, but still not sufficiently troublesome to cause me to actually do it (thank Heavens I never wasted the time to actually watch that insipid propaganda piece!). Until late summer 2008, I was attending a conference in Phoenix, AZ (the time and location I have determined was chosen deliberately, because the organizers intended to hammer this Global Warming thing pretty hard at that year’s event) called GovEnergy [insert appropriate year]. This conference worked pretty well, I thought, bringing together government agencies and individuals who were actually conscientious about the moneys their department(s) spent, and wanted to find help in reducing expenditure of their resources, particularly energy resources, with people and institutions that could actually help them reduce said consumption. Several of the plenary sessions focused on Global Warming and/or Climate Change and how it would affect future budgets, but in the closing session on the morning of the last day, a special guest speaker whose name I failed to record and have been unable to determine from the conference’s published documentation, opened his talk by stating, “You don’t need to go researching Climate Change or Global Warming, you don’t need to Google or whatever, the science is settled. The time for debate is over. Everything you need to know about global warming is right here…” and gave the url http://www.realclimate.org. Given an opening statement like that, what would you do? That’s right, upon returning to my desk at work (it still took me about a month to get around to it) I Googled “Global Warming”. One of the suggested completions, based on frequency of lookup by all users, was “Global Warming swindle”. That alone was eye-opening. The other things I turned up were mind-boggling.

Of course most webpages discussing the topic included graphs of all kinds of things, and the presentation of CO2 vs temperature anomalies did seem to show a kind of sorta correlation, but it just didn’t look right somehow. I believe it took me a couple of months to come across the report indicating that ∆CO2 could not cause temperature changes, but rather it seemed that ∆CO2 lagged ∆T by some 80-800 years. Once I read it, I could instantly see it on the graphs, there was no doubt the finding was correct. The whole thing was indeed a scam, a swindle, a fraud, an outright deception!

I did eventually visit http://www.realclimate.org and what I read there scared the Hell out of me! Buried in the midst of a long post, which may not have been a headlined article but rather a response/comment in some part of the blog, the author (I think it was Gavin Schmidt, seems to me I recall going in search of his writings since I had already found his name repeatedly mentioned in connection with the website) stated right out in public, “…we know it’s happening, we’re just not finding it in the record. So there’s only one conclusion: the data must be wrong. We already have someone looking into that and working on correcting the record,…” In other words, we will torture the data until it confesses! The quote scared me because not only could he never allow himself to consider the whole hypothesis might be wrong, it was obvious that he was so confident of support from above, he could confess in advance to data alteration (oh let’s call it what it was, I read that if he wasn’t getting the data he wanted, he would just MAKE IT UP!), which seems to me should be a CRIME, and would expect not only no negative repercussions, but that he should be hailed as a hero!

Boy, talk about turtles all the way down, this lady’s philosophy on life is right in line with the RealClimate commenter, and reflects that of nearly the entire climate “science” community: she settled on a predetermined mindset with regard to how the world works and she therefore got into a field where she could manufacture the data to support that mindset, and then use that manufactured data as a cudgel to beat the rest of the world into submission until they do it the way she tells them! Note that she has even abandoned the pretense of asking everyone, or anyone, to do it her way, just do as she tells you!!!

What a life . . . Dr Lewis is paid by Australian taxpayers to sell extreme AGW theories.https://researchers.anu.edu.au/researchers/lewis-schttp://www.woroni.com.au/environment/keep-calm-and-dont-carry-on-understanding-climate-extremes-with-dr-sophie-lewis/
She has a big carbon foot-print; however, that’s OK because she’s exempt from the CO2 spewing consequences of attending conferences and undertaking field trips.
“My current fellowship is generous in many ways, but also highly restrictive. I have money available for travel to particular conferences, but I can’t buy a computer, for example. Computers are considered essential, and hence should be provided by a university, not a funding body, regardless of whether they are used glorified typewriters, projectors for cat videos or scientific instruments.”https://sophieclewis.com/blog/
And she wants more of other people’s money and she’ll get it when her next grant is approved. There are hundreds-of-thousands of Dr Sophie Lewis types duplicating research and spending precious tax dollars while badly needed dollars for infrastructure and health are ignored.
Dr Sophie Lewis is much more than a hypocrite . . .

Shes a legend in her own mind –
“I am a climate scientist and I research an issue that affects every single person alive today and for decades to come. At the supposed apex of my creativity, energy and intellectual capability, I wake up every night panicking about affording a laptop, not about how I can help us all be best prepared for living in an extreme climatic future.”

a high priestess who will save us from our self’s & therefore more important than us,

The solution to heat waves is very simple…having air conditioners and fans and a ready supply of affordable electricity to use them.
But the measures people like her want to put in place do exactly the opposite of what she claims to care about and want to do.
In the articles linked above, she states concerns for poverty and inequity, and also for preparing for future heat waves.
But the poor and the disenfranchised are exactly the people hurt most by so called green energy policies, which aim to prevent undeveloped countries from having abundant and affordable energy.
And the wind and solar power pushed by her ilk are likely to fail to provide power at precisely the times she views as most precarious…during heat waves.
Recent heat waves in Australia are called the worst ever in history, but it seems that as is the case here in the US, the hottest parts of the temperature records of the past 100+ years have been adjusted out of existence:
“How could it be getting hotter … if it was really hotter 118 years ago? It’s relatively simple: the early years are simply wiped from the official record.”

What a poser. People were having kids during the 50’s, the height of the cold war, when nuclear armagedon seemed much more likely. Is she trying to justify her apparent hypocrisy by claiming credit for the angst she has suffered ?

Her specific area of research and interest seems to be to link specific weather events to human caused climate change.
OMG, what a waste of time.
She apparently got her PhD studying the history of long-term changes in the Australian monsoon, and is doing post-doctorate work in reconstructing past climate change, and yet seems to think that heats waves in Australia are some new thing, and coping with heat a baffling problem with no apparent solution.
She seems completely unaware that there are hundreds of millions of people who live in places that have entire seasons every year in which the normal temp exceeds what is called a heat wave in her neck of the woods.
The same thing happens here in the US…for large parts of the country, a week in a row of normal Florida summer weather is called a crippling disaster.
This vexing challenge seems to call more for a army of HVAC workers, cheap power, and efficient air conditioning units, than for self-absorbed, worrywart, fear-mongering “climate scientists”.

Lady, relax! No need to Darwin Award yourself. No need to voluntarily (and tragically) remove yourself from the gene pool because of green-left anti-capitalist, anti-industrialisation, white-guilt propaganda. Treasure your time as a mother.

Oh…and find another branch of science to get into. Climate Change (TM) is passing its use-by date.

And whilst she and her ilk fret about their kids futures, they utterly ignore the plight of children today.

Our parents and grandparents had more on their minds, like global conflict, to bother worrying about what they were leaving their children. Indeed, without even considering it, by defending their freedom, they left the world in a far better condition than when they were in it.

I can’t ever recall a conversation, nor a media peice in my youth that droned on about the future we leave for our children beyond leaving a small inheritance, perhaps by leaving the house to be divided amongst the family.

How does one eat an elephant? One small piece at a time. These grandly posturing, self obsessed fantasist’s imagine they can influence what happens 100 years hence, and have the audacity to broadcast it on a public forum.

In reality, they can do no more than work hard and perhaps change one small thing in a lifetime. But this woman grandly presents herself as the Einstein of the moment, with all the solutions, to all the problems, not that even Einstein would have claimed that.

Then she goes right ahead and drops a brat into the world. How special will that child feel when he/she realises his/her mother decided to question the scientific value of bearing it? Doubtless it will feel like just another experiment worth conducting because it’s mother decided she could save the world.

Meanwhile our pal Recep Erdogan, President of Turkey, calls upon all Turks living in Europe to have at least five children, to speed up the conquest of Europe “by the womb”.
Doesn’t he know the dilemma he is putting his fellow-Turks in ?

Dr. Lewis, despite her self-inflicted misgivings, is willing to feel “intensely joyful” at the arrival of her baby. She is built to do so, and to deny that feeling would be a great shame. So please pardon me for also experiencing intensely joyful wonder as I observe the atmosphere doing exactly what it is built to do: It moves. It responds to heat itself. It circulates. Thunderstorms emerge on their own, to launch heat upward with impressive power. Cumulus clouds form easily, reflecting the heat of the sun just enough to maintain a pleasant climate in which we thrive. Wow.

Inscription in Ashbourne churchyard, Derbyshire: ‘She was in form and intellect most exquisite. The unfortunate parents ventured their all on this frail bark, and the wreck was total.’

A white marble monument commemorates the five-year-old Penelope Boothby, who died in 1791, the only child of Sir Brooke and Lady Susannah Boothby. She had been painted in life by Sir Joshua Reynolds and was immortalised in death as a sleeping child by the sculptor Thomas Banks.

‘He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.’ Francis Bacon

For some of us old enough to remember I am reminded of the argument that Gloria and Meathead had on “All in the Family” about having children. To me this well illustrates how profoundly stupid some liberals can be. Let me also remind you what John Holdren, Obama’s science advisor, once said about forced abortions.

“Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.”

I am sure there was a post about leaving potential refugee adoptees where they are because if they were adopted into western countries, their “carbon footprint”, would be so much bigger! Meaning, leaving people in need in perpetual poverty and threats of danger and death.

Reading through the Sydney Morning Herald comments on this self absorbed mother’s essay is a depressing look into the minds of a bunch of reactionary uninformed selfish people. If course they dress their derivative thinking as if they “care” but the bottom line is that nearly all of them have bought into Ehrlich’s misanthropic mythology and fail to see the real progress around the world and instead see guilt ridden doom.

BTW, I am in the process of bringing children from Zimbabwe to Australia, right now. Visa’s have been approved, my wife is, right now, over Australia still, on her way so that she can bring two young people here.

Guys, you all got pawned. NO WAY is that a serious essay. Somebody that stupid couldn’t get an advanced degree in such a difficult area as climate science. Only our best and brightest do into that field.

But, if that essay were sincere… well, it would take a heart of stone not to laugh.

You’re a good person as long as you feel guilty about it. Pathetic drivel really and worse still rehashed pathetic drivel from the cold war era. The only concerning part is that students at the university may mistake her for an educator and scientist.

I like to point out to to people not actively making/raising young children that having a baby is the most polluting thing one can do. I’ll stop burning through the planet’s hydrocarbons in a couple decades or so. My daughters and their offspring will go through all the rest. 🙂

Griff1 We just never really know what the Hell you’re talking about! We know it’s wrong because whenever we take the time to figure it out we prove it. Someone will make a comment that utterly devastates your opinion and then you disappear. You never admit defeat. You just slink away. I can’t help thinking you are paid by someone to be disruptive here. You comment on practically everything and are always wrong. Who would do that unless paid to?

The thing about the climate is that no-one, using currently known science, can accurately predict whether we are heading for an ice age or a continuation of the gentle natural warming which has occurred since the Little Ice Age, and on what timeframes. So best to just enjoy cheap, reliable energy, improve living standards, and have the resources to adapt to whatever is coming.

Well she can cushion the blow to the planet by giving the child thin gruel and a bit of weak tea without sugar each morning and send it forth to gather wild berries and roots for dinner. Is there a picture? Someone pointed out that protester groups had an inordinate percentage of portly young ladies. There seems to be no shortage of portly male climate minions, too. All that foie gras and mocho-caramel-double lattes. Their carbon footprints are deep too I guess!

Apart from the impact that humans have on climate, the increase of the human population as a whole is probable the most challenging issue for the future. Currently (and for some time) the world population grows by a 200.000 individuals per day! Nobody knows what the limit is, but there is certainly a limit and we are bound to hit it. The climate discussion distracts the attention from this much more pressing issue.
See: http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/

Please explain why you think “the increase of the human population” is a “pressing issue”.

Population growth is required to maintain economic growth. But affluence is reducing indigenous population growth in developed countries. And, therefore, developed countries are importing people from developing countries.

However, population growth will reduce in developing countries as affluence is obtained by those countries. Hence, it is foreseeable that there may be a shortage of the population needed by developed countries for them to maintain economic growth.

But your link indicates the shortage is not likely to occur this century. How is is possible for a potential future problem that is not likely to occur this century to be a “pressing issue”?

Less than 5% of the Earth’s surface is taken up by human civilization. While not all areas of the Earth are suitable for widespread human habitation, we aren’t running out of room anytime soon.

Leftivists only lose sleep over this fake issue because a super-majority of them live in big cities, where squalor from localized overpopulation is a legitimate problem. They take a local issue and extrapolate it onto the rest of the world. Just like local severe weather being blamed on so-called global climate change.

Lip service allows all kinds of group think and popularity contests within such groups. It is the birthplace of do what I say, not what I do. Dr. Sophie has it down pat…and likely wonders still why Hillary lost the election, not seeing the evidence in her own writing.

Doesn’t anyone remember Zero Population Growth? It was mainly an American thing, I think, and it was around in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Earnest young women would get their tubes tied so they could help to avert Paul Ehrlich’s nightmare. Say what you will, those poor ZPGers had the courage of their convictions.

That wouldn’t happen with today’s climateers. They only do the easy stuff.

This is Virtue Signaling B.S. fair and simple. These self absorbed fools were not going to have kids anyways. They make such statements so they can pretend to show everyone else how virtuous they are when in fact they could not be bother with children!

“At the same time, among my friends and colleagues, such ordinary desires are increasingly accompanied by long, complex conversations about the ethics of such aspirations.” Ummmm… you need better friends. BTW, enjoy the baby, they’re always delightful!

First, congratulations to Dr. Lewis for discovering intrinsic value in human life, an article of faith and judgment.

Now, discover the separation of logical domains, specifically the narrow limits of the scientific domain, and reject the temptation to indulge in prophetic products.

The first step to adulthood is marked by an acceptance of our limited causality. The second step to adulthood is marked by an acceptance of our limited perception. The third step to adulthood is realized with a reconciliation of moral, natural, and personal imperatives.

“Children born today face a dramatically different climate future than their parents did. A child born today is a child of a changing – and extreme – global climate.”

=====================

The political climate future may indeed be different if some groups have 5 babies rather than 3. That would be an extreme “global climate change” you can believe in and regret. CO2 will not be the accelerating factor.

Ok – I quickly looked around the web, trying to find out what Sophie’s PhD actually is…Frankly I can’t find a straight-forward statement of the field of science in which she earned her PhD (physics? Chemistry? Astrology?).

Can someone who understands the apparently deliberate obfuscation of Australian academia please tell me the science discipline in which she earned her PhD (i.e.: does this woman have the technical background to even pretend to know what she’s talking about)?

The correct issue to worry about is what will happen to my public retirement pension if I don’t have 2.0 children? Someone has to pay for it, and it is usually future taxpayers (i.e. your children). Anything more than 2 children is gravy.

Visiting Ayres Rock a few years ago My wife and I ran into an American tourist who was bringing his 14 year old grand daughter to see Australia.
He allowed all his grand children a chance to go anywhere they wanted within reason.
She wanted to see a country that had not had a disabling major civil war, as had the US, the originator of modern mechanised warfare.
He was astonished that we had six children.
He was well below the Net reproductive Rate for his family, on of the reasons he could shout his grand children a free world trip.
Fot him, he was saving the planet.
My attitude is that if one can afford children and look after them, educate them, they will look after the coming generations.
One hopes they will be better than we are.
As for climate change, if one still believes we are doomed by inevitable climate change, work at adaptation.
The populations of China, India, Indonesia,Japan, Russias and now the US, the short list, are doing just that.
Make sure there is electricity to run the anesthetic machines, humidicribs and schools where our children will be.
Enter the journey.

This is a very interesting and, I believe, salient point. The only way that having a child is an ethical dilemma is if you feel that you can’t or won’t provide a decent life for that child. For a “climate scientist” who produces nothing, preaches hopeless misery and has no intention of making any effort to actually determine her child’s future, I guess I see a self fulfilling prophecy. I just hope she doesn’t take her anti-depressants while she’s pregnant.

“Part of my motivation for becoming a climate scientist was my grave worries for our future and my desire to make a positive contribution.”

This is terrible statement for a (supposed) scientist to make as she reveals herself to be an activist first and a scientist second. With that viewpoint, how can anyone ever trust that her hypotheses (and the testing of them) ever comes from an unbiased source? As a scientist who got into the field because of an interest in how things work, I know how hard it is to deal honestly with results which “don’t fit” your hypothesis and when you are already biased subconsciously then you will never be able to do this.

“Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow within the Practical Justice Initiative. Sophie is a health sociologist and qualitative researcher with a background in public health. Her research broadly focuses on sociological understandings of the experiences of living with long term conditions including cancer and obesity. Her current research looks at the ways people navigate the Australian healthcare system and make choices about public and private health service; how social interactions and social context enable people to manage chronic conditions; and the lived experience of advanced cancer. ”

There are two ‘Dr Sophie Lewis’ living off Australian taxpayers; one in climate research and the other in social science research . . . plus many thousands of Dr Sophies keeping Australia’s real workers (current and retired) much poorer than they should be given our advantageous position in the World. Our retired and elderly are increasingly having difficulty paying their energy bills. Corrupt academics and their green industry mates are hurting Australians more and more. Our Government, despite its own ‘unadjusted’ data is buying carbon credits and paying academics to duplicate research and create AGW hype to bolster the green industry sector. Our Prime Minister is an ex Goldman Sachs CEO (Aus). You know Goldman Sachs caused the downfall of the real USA. Read about the current power struggle inside Trump’s administration between the Goldman Sachs dark lords and Bannon. If Bannon can’t crush them the USA is in for another decade of rust-belting. And Bannon better win because it would give us half a chance down-under!

We don’t need anymore of these paid for by the elite, psychopathic masters to lie, spin unreasonable, idiotic propaganda. We are in a small ice age on part of the planet since 1975, Climategate? Ever hear of that maybe not as it was suppressed E. Anglea..look it up. Ok so we are all carbon units and live on a planet that exists due to carbon and is essential for photosynthesis growing of food, plants. There are many other years left out of hit piece by Al Gore: Inconvenient B.S Book in which Earth was much warmer by the way (like 300 years in between his junk theories) . The only warming we have and always have had is from the SUN it is called solar activity and is normal, normal. Weather is always changing. Climate is always changing especially with the mysterious Moon (we still never got the complete story on how it actually showed up??)lots of theories there but it has an effect on surface of Planet Earth and Climate. Thanks to Planned Parenthood and other Eugenics Organizations we now kill more than 39% of all pregnant mother’s babies (more than are actually born). Sick. One last realtiy: This tiny Planet Earth with only 24% land mass on 7 continents is not overpopulated and in fact could support many, many more. Being a pilot and having gone all over world I can tell you personally most of these 7 continents are empty–tundra. The only place where the small population of Earth is located is crowded on purpose into cities of Each country in Each Continent. All a perception deception and you are probably paid for and appreciated by your elite, psychopathic masters as you have come to the conclusions they wanted you to have and push on the rest of us.

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